Digithoughts

The Daytona 500 -- AKA, The Great American Race -- was postponed for the first time in its 54 year history last weekend.  The event finally started Monday night at 7 p.m. ET and didn't finish until almost 1 a.m.  In the end Matt Kenseth came out on top, winning his first full-length #DAYTONA500.

Daytona always provides plenty of action off and on the track. You might remember the infamous fistfight of '79 or the Pothole 500 in 2009, when the race surface has to be repaired - twice.  Curious what they used to patch it? Bondo!

Last night was a firestorm of action. With less than 40 laps to go and while the race was under caution Juan Pablo Montoya tangled with a jet dryer in Turn Three (the same dangerous turn where Dale Earnhardt died in 2001). Montoya's crash spilled 200 gallons of jet fuel on to the race surface, stalling the action for over two hours while safety crews tended to the roaring flames and the drivers of the dryer and the stock car.

During the inactivity on the race track, Twitter was a-flutter.  Brad Keselowski tweeted using his Sprint iPhone 4s about the incident and gained tens of thousands of followers (not the 100k that Mashable claims).  If Brad hadn't been active on Twitter for years, you might think he was inspired by the SpeedTV Social Garage. My favorite tweet of the night: "There was less sand on the track in the first race in Daytona" when they were still racing on the beach.

This was certainly not the smoothest start to the NASCAR season.  But then again, Daytona rarely is. That's what makes it special.

Brent Summers Senior Producer

Read more from the Web Trends category. If you would like to leave a comment, click here: Comment or stay up to date with this post via RSS, or you can Trackback from your site.